Get Some Rest
by zaluzianskya
Summary: It's Christmas Eve and Dirk is working. (Dirkjake)


This was originally written for my friend Ciri as part of the Giftstuck exchange.

* * *

 _4:13 PM, December 24_

"You've been up since midnight, Dirk. You really ought to get some rest."

Dirk rolled his eyes for the fifth time in the past four hours (one time for each admonishment from his boyfriend). "I've told you, I'll get some rest as soon as the pre-Christmas rush is over. You know the servers are being stretched to their limit right now, bro. I'm not about to leave them unattended."

Jake tsked. Even though he was in the kitchen preparing a nice pumpkin stew for dinner, Dirk could still sense the judgment radiating off of him. It was nothing new, and it wasn't anywhere near enough to get him to change his mind. "Haven't they got somebody else who can take over?"

"No," Dirk responded through gritted teeth. "That's why they hired the only independent contractor who was available on Christmas Eve."

"Ah," was the only response Jake seemed able to muster.

"Yeah. So you can see that it's extremely vital for me to stay on the ball. Don't worry, traffic should slow down by ten-ish."

"Dirk, it's only four."

There was no reason to respond to that, so Dirk focused in on his laptop screen, typing out a response to a support request that had just come in and ignoring Jake's sigh of exasperation.

* * *

 _5:24 PM_

Dirk finally set his laptop down on the coffee table. He felt a little bad for the way Jake's eyes lit up at the gesture. He was only doing it so he wouldn't spill his stew all over the keyboard when he ravenously dug into it.

Jake took a seat beside him on the couch, leaning up against his shoulder. "Feeling tired?"

"Nope," he responded through a mouthful.

"Well, good, but I _really_ hope you aren't pushing yourself."

"Don't worry about it." An IM popped up on his screen and he set his bowl aside to address it. "After I'm done working I'll sleep. You can even handcuff me to the bed," he added with an eyebrow raised playfully.

"I've half a mind to withhold the horizontal refreshment for the foreseeable future, what with how you're behaving today," Jake grumbled.

"You wound me."

* * *

 _5:50 PM_

Dirk yawned.

For all Jake's prior nagging, this time he said nothing. He stepped out into the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee.

* * *

 _6:12 PM_

Dirk picked up his stew for the first time since setting it aside roughly forty-five minutes earlier. It was cold, but he was used to eating cold food. It came with his line of work.

There was something wrong with the site's search function. He'd known going into this that the whole thing was a hot mess, but he'd underestimated the extent of it. This shit was hot enough to leave third-degree burns on a sizable portion of his body. About an hour ago he'd sent a message to a staffer inquiring about some nitpicky details of how the database did its indexing, and he was just now getting a response.

"Are you fucking serious."

"Pardon?" Jake glanced over at the laptop screen.

"This is bullshit. Who does this? Jesus christ, it's like they want their fucking site to crash whenever they get even a moderate amount of extra traffic. Are they not interested in actually making any sales?"

"I wouldn't understand the technical details, would I."

"Probably not." Dirk sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "But basically what it boils down to is the entire search system is shitty as fuck. It's non-intuitive for users, keywords with too many results don't actually _show_ all the results, and search terms with too many synonyms cause system lagging."

"Sounds like they should hire you full time," Jake suggested.

"Hell no. This is the last time I work for this company." He threw his hands in the air in frustration. "I mean, I've heard shit about this site, but I didn't think it could be _that_ bad. How could anyone be this fucking bad?!"

Jake set a hand on Dirk's back and rubbed between his shoulder-blades. While it was very soothing, Dirk couldn't let himself relax too much. His eyelids were getting heavy. If he let his guard down he just knew Morpheus would blindside him out of nowhere, and even his rad shades wouldn't protect him from the sands of sleep.

* * *

 _7:30 PM_

Jake stood up to answer a knock at the door.

"Oh, hello there, Jade! How are you doing?"

"I'm great! Anyway, I just wanted to..."

Dirk couldn't focus on the rest of their conversation. His attention was wandering. It took all his effort to actually parse the words on his screen.

He did notice, though, when Jake stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind himself. Okay, maybe... he could just close his eyes for a few seconds. That would be okay, right? Regain some energy really quick and then get back to work. Yeah.

Nothing could go wrong. Absolutely... nothing...

* * *

 _8:03 PM_

Something warm draped over him. Around him. His laptop was lifted off his lap and his shades plucked off his face. He mumbled in protest, but truthfully, he wasn't that bothered.

* * *

 _2:00 AM, December 25_

Dirk awoke to find himself cradled in Jake's arms, a blanket wrapped around them both, and he smiled and nestled more closely into the embrace before drifting back to sleep.

* * *

 _2:05 AM_

"Shit. Shit shit shit shit."

"Mmmuh?" Jake stirred beside Dirk. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sat up and peered over Dirk's shoulder at his laptop.

"The site went down at eight." Dirk's fingers flew furiously across his keyboard as he pulled up the database logs.

"Can you tell why?"

"I'm looking that up right now," he replied in an irritated tone. "But it looks like afterward they kept getting hammered by people refreshing and trying to get the page to work, which only made things worse. If I'd been up to handle things— Argh!"

Jake patted his shoulder sympathetically. "You said their site was terribly coded anyway, right?"

"Well, yeah..." Dirk squinted at the logs. "Looks like the server collapsed from one too many search requests. This is some seriously shitty programming. I couldn't even begin to enumerate the ways in which—"

"Then don't bother, darling." Jake wrapped his arms around Dirk's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder with a pout. "Let's get back to sleep. It's Christmas."

It took Dirk a moment, but eventually he responded, "...fine. Just let me reboot the server and get the site back online. It should only take a few minutes."

"It had better."

Jake didn't move from his spot, coiled around Dirk like some kind of demanding octopus, until Dirk had finished what he was doing and closed his laptop. The two of them stood, joined hands, and finally, after far too long, made their way to bed.

* * *

 _2:33 AM_

Dirk snored lightly. Their legs were entangled with one another, Dirk's head resting on Jake's chest, Jake's hand nestled in Dirk's hair. Jake smiled fondly down at his lover, and his eyes fluttered shut as he joined him in his slumber.


End file.
